Saturday, July 3, 2010

Failed Alzheimers Trial Data Pooled and Made Available

Biopharmas that have had failed Alzheimers drugs are pooling their data in an archive. This is excellent news for several reasons. First is that sharing data means a better chance at success in the future in this very therapeutically tricky disease that has sent more than its share of clinical programs to their graves.

This is a solution I hope we see employed outside this one disease. Several times I've been working on molecules that were killed either because there was a business case (didn't fit in the portfolio; acquisition occurred and acquirer only wanted other drugs from our pipeline, market changed during development, etc.) or scientific reasons - there were toxicities, or we found another molecule that was better. But it was always frustrating to think, particularly in the case of acquisitions, that the data was locked away on a server somewhere never to be seen again, and potentially of scientific use to future research programs. For Alzheimers at least this is no longer the case.

A secondary benefit is that the debate of pharmas "hiding" negative trial data will be quelled, again at least for Alzheimers. The failures will all out there for everyone to learn from.

Words to Live By

"...there is good and bad speculation, and this is not an unparalleled activity in science...Those scientists who have no taste for this sort of speculative enterprise will just have to stay in the trenches and do without it, while the rest of us risk embarrassing mistakes and have a lot of fun." - Dan Dennett